Month: September 2015

I took a leap yesterday and posted about my story, or well, part of my story anyway. It was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do, because there’s that bit of fear about whether you’re doing the right thing in sharing, or if there’s going to be (god forbid) a not-so-nice person trolling across blogs and leave a hurtful message…

But the thing to keep in mind is that, no matter what your story is, how bad or ashamed you might feel about it. Don’t be. What you are going through, even if you feel weak, the fact that you are here and working through it makes you so incredibly brave. So don’t be afraid or ashamed to share your story, because as I have seen on other blogs, and what they have made me feel in reading them, it is so inspirational.

Share with me in the comments below or use the Contact Me link if you just want to share privately, and tell me, what’s your story?

There, I said it. Now the whole world knows, yep, I have an eating disorder. Specifically, Binge-Eating Disorder. I struggled with this “label” as it were, for a really long time because let’s face it, Binge-Eating Disorder…it doesn’t really sound like a thing does it? But oh yes it is. It’s like the dirty cousin of Bulimia, it shares many of the same defining points, only there’s no compensatory action at the end – no vomiting, laxatives, working out at the gym like an idiot. Just eating food, and lots of it, without being able to stop yourself from doing it.

Why did I decide to blog about this? Well, there’s a few other blogs I’ve seen of women in particular who are struggling with various issues, OCD, depression and anxiety, and the strength that these women have is just amazing and inspiring. So I thought, just maybe if I could blog about my own experiences as well, perhaps it will help someone else to know that they are not alone, someone else out there knows exactly how they feel, and most importantly, that help is available.

I am only at the beginning of seeking help. A couple of years ago is around the time I think when I first starting trying to drown my emotions in food, and it helped. Like any addiction, it all seems to help at first. But then I started getting negative, self-loathing thoughts, especially as my body started changing because I was putting on weight. Part of me must have known that what I was doing wasn’t right, because I found myself starting to hide evidence of all my binges by burying rubbish underneath other rubbish already in the bin, or even hiding wrappers in my desk where my partner wouldn’t see them…and then still eating a full dinner just in case he asked why I wasn’t hungry. It was not long after I started hiding what I was doing that I thought about vomiting everything up, it just seemed like an easy solution. I thought about it, and I thought about it, and then something in my mind just clicked and I thought “I need help”.

I started with seeing my family doctor and just broke down in tears, and she prescribed me with moclobemide which is an anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medication and also put me in touch with a psychiatrist who is the best in the state. The medication has helped take the edge off all of my negative thinking but it is still there, I just don’t care about it as much, which is good in the sense that at least I’m not an inconsolable wreck and can still function properly at work. But at the same time makes it equally important to work with a psychiatrist to work through all those issues I have sitting in my head that are causing me to binge.

I had the first appointment with the psychiatrist a few weeks ago now. The only problem with seeing someone who is the best in the state is that it’s very hard to get an appointment with them, which I actually think has the potential to cause more harm to recovery than good. But anyway, I’m doing ok at the moment. This session, being the first one, it was mostly like an information session where I told him about my background and history and he helped me understand how it is that people may come to have eating disorders. That in itself was really interesting from a scientific perspective. Even rationally and logically you can look at it and say yep, I understand all of that, and even how to change it to get better… But actually implementing those changes…I am afraid..terrified even. What if it’s too hard and I can’t find the control within myself to do that? Well I suppose that’s one of the things I’m seeing him about, to help me establish that control over what I’m eating. It still terrifies me though.

I was actually really pleased that from the session I have tangible things to take away and work on, homework I guess you’d call it, and that makes me feel good about the session and hopeful about getting well. But it also makes me feel a bit stressed and anxious because there was quite a list of things to do, and it got me wondering how the hell I cope with that as well as things like uni and work and everything else in life!

So in case you’re interested, these are the tasks I was given from the first session:

Start keeping a food journal detailing time, what you’re eating, where you’re eating and what you’re thinking and feeling. This is so hard oh my gosh, whenever I binge I just want to pretend like this journal doesn’t exist so I can not write in it and therefore forget the binge happened. It’s only really been the last week or so that I have actually been detailing every single little thing accurately, so I feel like I’m making progress.

Read a book called Overcoming Bulimia Nervosa and Binge-Eating by Peter Cooper. I have read through near most of this book. It contains a manual for helping recovery, though it is recommended that you do this in conjunction with seeing someone like a dietician who specialises in eating disorders. So far I have worked through Step 1 and this week will be starting Step 2.

Write a letter to my eating disorder as a friend. You know like, hey friend you make me feel amazing. Felt a little weird but did help to put things into a weird sort of perspective.

Write a letter to my eating disorder as an enemy. Same sort of thing, only this one made me cry, but was also kind of cathartic.

A life chart detailing good and bad key events in my life and how they made me feel. This is a hard one, and one that took me a long time to complete because I kept going back to it to add more. I think this is one of the things that the psychiatrist will want to work through, like a list of issues that you keep locked away and don’t properly deal with.

Share with me in the comments below; are you recovering from an eating disorder, or have you recovered from one? Tell me a bit more about your journey.

Another week has gone by, I can’t believe how quickly the year is disappearing! I have to confess, sometimes I find these posts hard to do because by the end of the week I seem to be starting to forget all the things that happened in anticipation of the weekend! Does anyone else have that problem or is it just me?

Birthday invitations. Last weekend I got together with my Mum and we started working on the invitations for my 30th birthday.

Application submitted. This is a bit exciting, but I also feel conflicted about feeling excited. I love what I’m doing, I like the company and the people I work with, but I saw an opportunity with another company which just looks so amazing that I just had to apply for it.

Shared morning tea. Oh this was so good. A little while ago my team and I won a video competition at work and we were given a budget of $400 to do whatever we wanted. One of the things we decided to do was hold a shared morning tea for all the other teams that were in the competition. It was really well received, and we had a great time, and we also had enough left overs to last for two days.

Automated reports. At work my team has to spend hours and hours a month generating reports for clients and making sure they’re accurate. It can be a stressful process because of some issue we’ve had in the past. Anyway, there was a hackathon recently at work and one of the teams worked on automating the reports. It’s just a proof of concept at the moment but we’re going to go ahead with it which is super exciting.

WFH. I am working from home today, and grateful I am able to do that. My neck and shoulder have been really sore and after the excruciating pain I was in yesterday I wanted to be able to lay down a couple of times during the day just to get some relief…seems to be the only way to get it!

I hope you’ve all been having a good week, let me know your highlights in the comments below!

Today I wanted to share a picture from my Bali holiday earlier this year. So not much of a throwback but it already seems like a distant memory to me!

This picture was taken at a place in Bali called Frankenstein’s Laboratory, and if you’re ever in Bali I’d definitely recommend going there. It’s like Halloween every night, and all of their food and drinks all have suitably creepy names. And if that wasn’t enough their drinks are served in beakers or test tubes or syringes or even IV bags, it’s pretty cool!

The cocktail I had was the Spine Tingler, which was one that I got to mix myself! It was big enough for two drinks, my partner had the Dead Finger Iced Tea which was properly made with only a splash of coke, it was so potent and then with our dessert we shared a Chocolate Mudskull.

We did also have food, burger and fries with creepy names like Zombie Burger or Dr Frankenstein. They were tasty but it’s hard to make food look “creepy” – and if it was would you eat it? Well, I suppose we did drink the “creepy” looking drinks so that’s a yes lol!

They also put on shows every night, dancing and what not to Michael Jackson songs like Thriller, that was so good. Cool food and drinks, plus a couple of shows while we were there, it was lots of fun!

Below is a picture of me with my Spine Tingler chemistry set, and of my partner with his Dead Finger Iced Tea – the syringe is the shot of coke that went into it. Oh man it was so good!

Have you found any cool places like this, not just in Bali but elsewhere? Let me know in the comments below!

This post is a bit delayed I know, but I totally passed out on the couch last night before I got a chance to write about it and then today I’ve been busy creating my birthday invitations. Anyway, on to the highlights for this week!

Movie date. Last Saturday night my partner and I went out to see a movie, we saw The Scorch Trials which is the latest Maze Runner movie. It wasn’t too bad, had some jumpy bits in it and was pretty action packed.

Pole class. Had a good class last Sunday, we did a few tumbles and a lot of fancy leg floor work, and special mention, one of the girls let me borrow her knee pads for the class because I’d just worn my normal pole shorts so my knees had zero protection. So I was very grateful for her generosity!

Royal Adelaide Show. After pole class my partner and I headed to the Show and spent the afternoon there and saw the fireworks which I love seeing every time I go to the show!

Evening to myself. My partner went out with one of his buddies for dinner and movies while he’s in town so I got to have an evening to myself in the house. Because of our new routine, we are with each other a lot which I don’t mind of course, but sometimes it’s nice to just be on my own for a couple of hours, and do those weird things I like doing when I’m alone… you know what I mean.

Morning tea with the girls. Oh the old highlight on my list, catching up with the girls for morning tea on Wednesday morning, this is quite often a highlight for me, it’s one of the favourite parts of my working week.

Let me know in the comments below what the highlights for your week were.